_The thing is, we never actually spoke the same language.
_
The myth of engineering organizations is that everyone is building the same tower and sharing the same understanding of what “moving up” even means.
But in reality, each group is standing on a different floor of that tower.
Developers focus on how it is built — the structure, the materials, the movement of code and systems.
Security focuses on where it might collapse — weak points, blind spots, places where trust is assumed but not proven.
Legal focuses on accountability — rules, obligations and consequences.
Business focuses on purpose — speed, growth, value and direction.
They are all looking at the same tower.
Yet none of them can see the whole structure.
And somehow, they are all expected to keep building it together.
Languages Don’t Collapse, Alignment Does
The story of Babel is usually told as the moment communication broke.
But Babel didn’t fail because people stopped talking.
It failed because they stopped building from the same blueprint.
People don’t need to stop speaking to drift apart.
They only need to start making decisions based on different assumptions.
One team reinforces the tower for safety.
Another extends it for growth.
Another adjusts it to satisfy external requirements.
Each decision makes sense on its own.
The problem appears when nobody is looking at how those decisions affect the structure as a whole.
_Murphy’s Law reminds us: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
_
And in complex systems, failure rarely appears where people are paying attention.
It appears where assumptions collide.
Everyone Is Still Building, Just Not The Same Tower
What makes modern Babel dangerous is not silence.
Everyone is still communicating.
Everyone is still working.
Everyone is still building.
But slowly, something changes.
Each part of the organization starts to believe it is building the tower on its own.
Not just a floor or a part of it.
And from that moment, the shared picture starts to break.
Decisions stop connecting to each other.
Each team keeps improving what it can see.
Yes, the tower can survive different perspectives.
But what it cannot survive is each floor following its own blueprint.
And this is where GRC becomes necessary.
Not because people stop building together.
But because they stop seeing the same tower.
Deciding How The Tower Should Grow
GRC is often described as Governance, Risk and Compliance.
Technically, that’s correct.
But in the context of Babel, that definition is too narrow.
GRC exists because a single tower can no longer rely on a single interpretation of what “correct construction” means.
It doesn’t restore a lost language.
Instead, it provides a framework for decisions.
One that helps decide which changes strengthen the structure and which start to pull it in the wrong direction.
Not by removing disagreement, but rather by making it manageable.
There Are Many Ways To Build A Tower
One of the easiest traps to fall into is believing there’s a perfect version of the tower somewhere.
A design that everyone would support if they just had enough information.
Babel challenges that idea.
Add a control and something slows down.
Remove a step and something becomes more exposed.
Improve one part of the structure and another part must adapt.
That’s the nature of building complex systems.
There is no final version where every goal is achieved at the same time.
Only a continuous balance between competing priorities.
The tower doesn’t become perfect.
It becomes stable enough to keep growing.
So What’s GRC Role In The Build?
Not safety.
Not compliance.
Not control.
Those are outcomes.
At its core, GRC exists to keep the tower standing while different people continue building it with different assumptions.
Not by forcing agreement.
But by providing enough structure for decisions to move forward.
GRC is not the architect of the tower.
It simply helps ensure that everyone is still building the same one.
Babel Never Goes Away
This is the part people usually get wrong.
GRC doesn’t fix Babel.
It doesn’t bring back a single language.
It doesn’t make everyone see the same tower again.
Because that was never the real problem.
Different teams will always see different things.
Different priorities will always exist.
And that will not disappear.
So instead of trying to remove the difference, GRC works inside it.
It makes sure that even with different views, people can still build without pulling the tower apart.
Not by removing divergence.
But by preventing it from breaking the structure.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps the lesson of Babel was never that people stopped speaking.
Perhaps it was that no one could see the whole tower anymore.
Modern organizations face the same challenge.
Each team sees a different part of the structure.
Each one protects a different concern.
And each believes it understands the tower.
GRC doesn’t give anyone a complete view of it.
It simply ensures that despite that limitation, everyone keeps building the same one.
Top comments (0)